PortaPottyBossPro Blog — Weekly Service Scheduling

High-Use Porta Potty Sites: Spotting Them and Servicing Them Before Complaints

Some Sites Outrun the Schedule

Remote sites, as covered in Parks, Farms and Rural Sites: Scheduling Portable Toilet Service Far From the Yard, are usually light on use. High-use sites are the opposite problem. The units fill faster than the schedule expects, dispensers run dry midweek, and the first sign of trouble is often an angry call. The goal of this article is to catch these sites before that call.

What High Use Looks Like

High-use sites come in a few familiar shapes:

• Large construction crews, especially when several trades share a small number of units.
• Food truck lots, markets and busy commercial sites open to the public.
• Trailheads, beaches and ball fields on busy weekends.
• Long workdays in hot weather, when crews drink more water.
• Sites where units were sized for the start of a job and never updated.

Any site can become high-use. A job that started with a small crew can triple in a month. That is why you watch for signs instead of relying on how the site looked when you set it up.

Signs to Watch For

Your drivers see the first signs. A tank that is nearly full at every visit, paper gone before the next visit, sanitizer empty, a crowded area around the units, or a unit that smells worse than it should for the time since the last service. Ask drivers to note these on the job and take a photo.

In the office, watch for extra pump-out requests from the same site. One request is a bad week. Two or three in a month is a site that needs more. Extra Pump-Outs on Request: Fitting Unscheduled Service Into the Week covers handling those requests as they come in.

More Units or More Visits?

There are two ways to fix a high-use site: add units or add visits. Each has its place.

Add units when the problem is capacity during the day. If there is a line at lunch, or the tank fills in three days with weekly service, more units spread the load. Additional units also help when the site is hard to reach and extra trips are expensive.

Add visits when the units are adequate for the number of people but fill up before the next service. Twice-weekly service with three or four days between visits keeps the tanks in range without crowding the site with more units. Twice-Weekly Porta Potty Service: When One Visit a Week Is Not Enough covers setting up two visits a week.

Often the right answer is both: one more unit and a second weekly visit on the hottest months of the job.

Making the Case to the Customer

Customers do not like paying more, but they like complaints from their crew even less. Show them what you found. Photos from recent visits, the number of extra pump-outs in the last month, and a clear explanation of the options turn a price increase into a solution. Offer the choice between more units and more service, with prices for each, and let them pick.

Scheduling the Change

Once the customer agrees, update the job. Add the units with their type, quantity and unit numbers, and update the placement notes so the driver knows where the new ones go. Change the minimum days between visits if you are adding service. From that point, the site comes due on the Waiting List at its new rhythm.

Check the dispatch board after the change. A site that moved from one to two visits a week adds work to a truck on a second day. Look at the totals of stops and dollars for that day and make sure the truck can carry it.

Seasonal High Use

Some sites are only high-use part of the year. A park in July, a farm at harvest, a beach on summer weekends. For those, plan the change ahead and plan the change back. Raise service before the busy season, then lower it when use drops. Putting a reminder in the site's notes helps the office remember to adjust it.

Let the Customer Ask Early

Give high-use customers an easy way to ask for help before things get bad. The customer app lets them request service from their phone, and two-way texting puts their message in front of the office instead of in a driver's voicemail. A request that arrives Tuesday morning can be on a truck Tuesday afternoon. A complaint that arrives Friday after the crew has left is much harder to fix.

Stay Ahead of It

High-use sites are where complaints are born, and where good service is most visible. Watch for the signs, act early, and let the schedule carry the new rhythm. To see how service frequency, extra pump-outs and photos work together, visit PortaPottyBossPro portable toilet service scheduling software.